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Thursday, April 16, 2015

The Father of all Humans Lived 239,000 Years Ago

In some respects the idea of uniqueness is false. While the female linage can be expected to be conserved and to act as the natural well spring of mutational preservation, it is not so precise when it comes to men. They are agents of genetic exchange in the natural band environment. Thus the real communal truth is that genetics are blended very quickly and even more so than in settled civilization.

At best we have a fuzzy target of some tribe somewhere that produced the needed changes to create modern humanity and these were quickly shared through the rest of the community. Even a true Adam and Eve saw their children marry out and produce an immediate hybrid. In twenty plus generations the necessary genetics were well distributed and held by everyone within the extended tribe.

We actually see remnants of this process today. Aboriginal peoples are hybridizing and generally not even marrying back into their group afterward. Only two generations is enough to create features largely conforming to the dominant population. That is what really happened to most native tribal groups in Eastern North America and elsewhere for that matter.

There is actually a simple lesson here. If we want it introduce important genetic change it is necessary and sufficient to establish one couple as carriers. This is obviously not impossible..

By sequencing the genomes of 2,636 Icelanders — the largest set ever
obtained from a single population — researchers were able to identify
that genetic mutations play a role in everything from Alzheimer’s disease to liver disease.The Icelandic data also suggest that humanity’s most recent common male
ancestor, the "father" of us all, would have lived between 174,000 and
321,000 years ago.

That folks is a window that is pretty huge. In fact it is large enough for the entire available genetic stock to be blended. arclein ]

"insight into the sequence of the genome of an entire nation."

"What we have is a fairly detailed insight into the sequence of the
genome of an entire nation," says Kari Stefansson, a neurologist and
co-author of four studies published in Nature Genetics today.
He's also the CEO of biopharmaceutical company deCode, which partly
funded the work. "This is a reasonably large step toward understanding
how human diversity is dictated by diversity in the sequence of DNA."

The estimate for the most recent common male ancestor contradicts
some past findings. A 2013 study from the University of Arizona
estimated that the age of the father of all humans is about 340,000 years old.
But the Icelandic analysis indicates he probably lived about 239,000
years ago — a number that’s much closer to the estimate for humanity’s
most recent common female ancestor, who lived about 200,000 years ago.
"[Humans] are curious about where we came from, and how we became the
way we are," says Agnar Helgason, a genetic anthropologist at the
University of Iceland and a co-author of the common ancestor study published today. "And this gives us a bit more information about when."

From an evolutionary standpoint, older species have more time to
develop mutations that differentiate individuals, or populations, from
one another. That means the age of the human species is also related to
how diverse humans are as a whole.

8,000 Icelanders who have a least one gene that’s completely mute

Scientists also used the Icelandic data to identify 8,000 Icelanders who have a least one gene that’s completely mute,
meaning that it doesn’t function at all. Genes associated with people's
sense of smell were muted most often, but the researchers found 1,171
silenced genes overall. "We now have an insight into [human silenced
genes] — how frequently do you encounter individuals who have all
variants of a gene knocked out." That number is about 7.7 percent of
Icelanders, Stefansson says.

The size of these studies is impressive. But that doesn’t mean that
they were perfectly designed. The people whose genomes were used in the
muted gene paper, for instance, were taken from past disease studies,
says Andrew Allen, a geneticist at Duke University who didn’t take part
in the studies. This means that the "sample studied is not exactly
healthy, is somewhat opportunistic, and probably doesn’t correspond to
any ‘real’ population."

Sample studied "probably doesn’t correspond to any ‘real’ population.

Moreover, the "Icelandic population has a rather unusual demographic
history," Allen says. The country is relatively isolated, with just
320,000 inhabitants. Their ancestors had little contact with outsiders
until recently. This makes it hard to evaluate whether the findings are
related to some kind of selection process for genes that enhanced human
survival over time, or something else, like the size of the Icelandic
population.

Stefansson says that the results should still be representative of
people in other areas, however. "The Icelandic population doesn’t meet
any of the criteria for inbreeding," he says. "The 7.7 percent is likely
to be similar in other populations."

Still, the study could yield helpful information about the location
of genes that might be less susceptible to this loss of function, Allen
says. And even larger studies of this type will go a long way toward
figuring out the genetic patterns at finer scales and validating the
findings.

Now that the studies have been published, the scientists must decide
whether they will provide the study participants with information about
their genomes and their genetic risk for various diseases. "When we
started our work, the whole world was convinced that these results
should not be returned to the participants." Stefansson says. But "in
Iceland, just like everywhere else, people have been developing ideas
about what is right and what is wrong." Those views have been changing,
even though the goal of making discoveries for science haven't. "I’m
convinced that the Icelandic society will begin to use our data,
together with the health care system," he says. "I think it is the view
of most people that it is the only ethical thing to do."

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Jan 2015 - 3 Mil Pg Views, March 2013 - Posted my paper introducing CLOUD COSMOLOGY & NEUTRAL NEUTRINO rigorously described, September 2010 I am pleased to report that my essay titled A NEW METRIC WITH APPLICATIONS TO PHYSICS AND SOLVING CERTAIN HIGHER ORDERED DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS' has been published in Physics Essays(AIP) and appeared in their June 2010 quarterly. 40 years ago I took an honors degree in applied mathematics from the University of Waterloo. My interest was Relativity and my last year there saw me complete a 900 level course under Hanno Rund on his work in relativity,as well as differential geometry(pure math) and of course analysis. I continued researching new ideas and knowledge since that time and I have prepared a book for publication titled 'Paradigms Shift'. I maintain my blog as a day book and research tool to retain data and record impressions and interpretations on material read. Do join my blog and receive Four items of interest daily Monday through Saturday.